


Between the Breaks

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Give Me The News [1]
Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: Gen, Victor Ehrlich: Disaster Bi, extended surfing metaphors ahoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 15:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16936143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Just a little banter and a little introspection, falling somewhere in season one.





	Between the Breaks

    “All I want… is to lie down for ten minutes.” Victor whines. He wants to lie down for ten hours, if he’s honest, but he’s not going to get to. If he’s lucky he can actually spend ten minutes with his eyes closed, but if he actually falls asleep, Dr. Craig is going to drag him to surgery by his ear…

 

    He’s done the math. Ten minutes prone, eyes closed, and then he can get up, eat something-- coffee’s a bad idea, he’s running on fumes and caffeine and sugar are only going to make him jittery, but the act of eating will wake him up a little. He has the time to spend fifteen minutes lying down, but if he does that, he’s definitely going to fall asleep, and he might be able to swing ten, and…

 

    “Hope on call is empty, then.” Morrison pulls up alongside him. “If it comes down to sleeping in the chair, I’ll arm wrestle you for it.”

 

    “I can’t arm wrestle, I have to be in surgery in twenty-five minutes.”

 

    Morrison breaks into a smile at that. It’s one Victor can’t read at all, but it’s Morrison, so he trusts it’s not a mean smile-- not really. When White smiles, sometimes it’s fine and sometimes it’s nasty and sometimes Victor can’t tell, and when Samuels smiles he might be playing a prank on you but not to be mean-mean, and when Chandler smiles it’s usually nice, and when Fiscus smiles sometimes he wants something but usually it’s fine, and when Armstrong smiles sometimes she’s happy and sometimes it’s sarcastic, and when it’s Kiley he’s usually being an ass but you can’t _tell_ for sure, or Victor can’t, and when it’s Cavanero sometimes it’s nice and sometimes it means you need to shut up before she’s not smiling, but when it’s Morrison, like with Westphall, he is always, always nice. Craig-- more data required. He’d have to actually smile at Victor first.

 

    “You can grab the couch in the lounge.” Morrison says, and they nearly list into each other as they take the corner.

 

    “They’ve got the TV on in there. Besides, that couch is real short. And probably occupied...”

 

    “I’m just as tall as you are, buddy, if I’m winning that arm wrestling contest by default--”

 

    “We _could_ flip a coin for it.”

 

    It doesn’t matter. On call is mercifully, unexpectedly empty. Morrison slides past him for the lower bunk, which is fine. Victor just needs to _lie down_. Which he’s barely gotten to do when the door opens and Fiscus drags himself in.

 

    “Oh, hey, Victor-- did you just lie down?”

 

    “ _Yes_.”

 

    “Okay, okay.” He hears the scrape of the chair, hears Fiscus throw himself down into it with a sigh. “It’d probably be a safety issue to ask if I could come up and spoon you up there.”

 

    “I don’t care if it’s a safety issue, Fiscus, you can’t spoon me.”

 

    “You wouldn’t let me spoon you in my hour of need, if you were on the bottom bunk?”

 

    “There’s not any more room on the bottom bunk than there is up here.”

 

    “Yeah, but I don’t take up much room!”

 

    “Well I do.”

 

    “And it’s a lot less far to fall.”

 

    “The point is _moot_ , Fiscus. Besides, you’re not my type.”

 

    “Listen, you’re not mine, but desperate times, man. I haven’t even been off my _feet_ the past twenty-two hours. If you had to pick a guy to spoon, it would be me.”

 

    “It would not.”

 

    “I’m your best friend!”

 

    “You know…” Morrison mumbles, sleepy and understandably irritable. “I’m hurt, you never even asked me.”

 

    “You’re a married man.”

 

    Morrison chuckles. Victor can feel him roll over, the bunk creaking slightly but not in a way that feels precarious.

 

    “Anyway, if you have to pick a guy to spoon, you don’t pick your best friend.” He says. “Spooning your best friend is awkward, you pick someone who’s... I dunno. A good enough friend.”

 

    “Dr. Chandler.” Victor says. If he stops to think about it, Chandler might actually be his second choice, but he thinks he’s a good solid pick, and you can’t argue facts, he’s better looking than any other guy in the building. And you don’t have to like guys to see that. Plus he isn’t in the room, because it’d be awkward to pick a guy and have to explain to him that you’re not making a pass or anything just because he’s the least objectionable choice. And Victor thinks there are a few not-so-objectionable choices, but you can’t say it like that.

 

    “Why Chandler?”

 

    “He’s handsome.”

 

    “I don’t think it has to matter if a guy is handsome.” Fiscus balks. “If I was going to spoon a guy I don’t need him to be handsome.”

 

    “It doesn’t hurt.”

 

    “It hurts my ego, I like to be the handsomest man in whatever bed I’m sleeping in.” Fiscus says. The implication takes a moment to land, but when it does...

 

    “Hey!” Victor’s eyes open-- he’d been doing so well arguing without opening them, he’d wanted just to spend ten minutes with his eyes closed, and he doesn’t mind the talking because he can’t fall asleep, only he guesses they should both let Morrison sleep, but still. “What a thing to say to a guy you wanted to agree to spoon with you. I mean, really.”

 

    “Aww, you can come down and spoon with me.” Morrison says, though he sounds half asleep. “But eventually I’m going home to my wife. Someday.”

 

    Victor stares at the ceiling a long moment, forgetting that he’d wanted to keep his eyes _closed_. There’s an aching, small feeling in the pit of his stomach. Easy for Fiscus and Morrison to joke about it-- because of course he doesn’t expect Victor to crawl into his bunk when he’s got his own, not in a million years-- because no one will ever think they’re…

 

    Whatever he is. Bisexual. That’s the word, isnt it? He’s not easy with it. They don’t let you sleep with men and operate on people, he doesn’t think. Not that he’s sleeping with anybody, anyway, or sleeping, literally, which he’d like to do, badly. But they don’t let you operate on people if they think you might be sleeping with men, either, not with the Crisis.

 

    So Victor can’t joke around as much as the other guys, about stuff that seems… He made a mistake pointing out handsomeness as a selling point, he shouldn’t have said he’d even noticed Chandler is handsome, even though he thinks you’d have to be blind not to see it. And he doesn’t… It’s not that he wants to sleep with Chandler, though he’s also pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to say no if the guy asked him. But Chandler is straight, and even if he wasn’t, they’re bound by the same rules.

 

    And Fiscus can be sensitive sometimes because he’s a guy’s guy and he can joke around and when he’s crude now and then people laugh with him, and everyone knows what he’s like with women. And Morrison can be gentle and soft with people, he’s got a pregnant wife he’s got a solid relationship with. And both of them can tease a guy about a little spooning now and then and it’s all just jokes, but...

 

    It’s not like it’d be a _hardship_ to go out with girls, if he had the time or the energy or if he knew a girl who could put up with him for ten minutes at a time. It would be the opposite of a hardship to go out with a girl! But there’s still that sickish, sad feeling in him when he thinks about the things he can’t say, the things that are different for him. There are guys who don’t have to think about how something comes across because it’d be ridiculous to assume, and Victor has to think about how he comes across, and he’s bad at it.

 

    He closes his eyes and tries not to think about anyone in particular. To just think about what it is he likes about the idea of a man. Not sexually, even if he had the energy to fantasize, the on call room wouldn’t be the place for it. Just… the idea of a guy who holds you when you’re too tired to think. The idea that it’s different with a guy! Maybe it isn’t-- maybe as tall as he is, it wouldn’t be. Maybe the only guys who would want to be with him would be guys who expect him to be the big spoon and lend his jacket when it’s cold and be… something. Something he doesn’t really want to be. Not all the time, anyway! And at least you could ask a guy, you know, and maybe he’d like that. Maybe he’d feel good about being asked to be the big, strong man once in a while so you could just be… tired. No, not tired, he _is_ tired, he wants to be… He wants to be allowed to be things. And there’s something about the idea of being spooned-- honestly, by someone who wants you, not just for the real estate-- of being held by someone who’s… maybe not as tall as you, but maybe broader, or maybe lying in bed it doesn’t matter, you scoot around until it all works out, but something about being held in a way that lets you feel the way it feels to be out on the ocean. In the moments between the big waves, when you’re waiting, and everything’s still, and you’re so small in the face of something so vast, and the movement of it between the big ones is the gentle, steady heartbeat of the whole world.

 

    There are times when he feels stiff and awkward and too big for the space he has to occupy, and maybe sometimes it’s useful. You can reach the top shelf in the supply closet and stuff like that, and sometimes people avoid hassling you-- well, not if you’re Victor, though. He feels ungainly in crowded spaces. He feels like there’s a mold he has to fit. And there’s a mold you have to fit with a girl, and he’s not real good at fitting it, but… You can’t be too big to fit, when you’re out off the third point with breaks coming and coming, and it’s not the only time he ever feels coordinated or anything, but it takes something away, it takes away the pressure that comes from other people. And everything is the physicality and the connection and the sense of peace. And that’s just what he wants from another person. The removal of the false expectations that come from… from living in his body in the world. From having to be something particular.

 

    He knows he can’t explain it to people. Not just because he doesn’t want the stigma, doesn’t want to lose his job and his friends. But because he knows he doesn’t have the words to put it in that anyone else would understand. What he wants is to have the world stripped away, to have an… equitability. To sometimes be taken care of the way a man takes care of you and not the way a woman does, except if he tries to say that, it sounds like he wants a guy to make him feel feminine, and that’s not it at all. And it doesn’t need to come from a guy, it could come from a woman who was willing to take turns or to shuffle certain things around a little from the way they always seem to be. That’s all he wants, not to be playing by someone else’s playbook, but whenever he tries to put it into words even in his own head, he thinks of how he would be misconstrued. He doesn’t need the things a lot of guys he knows want from a girl, he’s used to taking care of himself. He cooks for himself, he definitely doesn’t want anyone else cleaning his home when they might not adhere to his standards! And he could just as easily do those things for someone else along with himself, but you know, you say that and people think there’s something wrong with you, and sure, it’s… exhausting, to cook and clean at all with his workload, it’d be nice to take turns with some things, the things someone else could do. But he doesn’t want a housewife. You talk about things a certain way, you talk about _want_ a certain way, with the guys, or you try to, but... male or female, he pictures his ideal partner and it’s someone like himself. Someone who understands coming home bone tired, and why it’s worth it. And sure, he could meet a girl through professional circles, maybe, who’d have the same idea, and that’d be fine. When the time comes to settle down, that’d be just fine, just...

 

    Sometimes he thinks about what it would be like. Crawling into bed with a guy about his height, an arm sliding around his waist from behind, a chin on his shoulder, a little tenderness, and that between-the-breaks feeling of peace. That’s all life is, isn’t it? Just on a wider scale. You ride the breaks, like performing open heart surgery, and you sit on your board in the lulls between and you breathe. It’s just that his life is break after break after break without a lot of lulls. He likes women a lot, but sometimes he thinks if he could, he’d be happier with a man. Not because he can’t be, with a girl, but because it’s different, or it could be. Because he wants his turn to be the little spoon.

 

    “Hey, Fiscus?” He checks his watch, grimacing. “You awake?”

 

    “Yeah.”

 

    “Got the bed warmed up for you, then, move on up.”

 

    He rolls over, slides down the ladder-- not that far to slide, he could probably just dangle himself off the side until his feet touched the floor, but…

 

    “You sure? You haven’t been up there ten minutes, have you?”

 

    “Ten minutes is all I got.” He shrugs. It doesn’t escape his notice that despite the concern for the length of his nap, Fiscus isn’t sitting around waiting for that bunk to go to anybody else. “I gotta be in surgery in fifteen, and I still gotta eat something.”

 

    “Well, thanks, pal. I’ll be long gone by the time you get back, but if you’re lucky it might be empty.”

 

    “Yeah, we’ll see.” He snorts. It had been a miracle finding it empty earlier. But… well, they’ve all crashed in chairs before sometimes, when the on call room is full. He can get off his feet somewhere and get some rest, even if it’s not great rest. Even if it’s not sliding into someone’s arms, or a heartbeat under his ear that reminds him of the ocean, even if it’s not peace, it’s… something. The chance to catch his breath before the next big break rolls in.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a favorite the moment Victor Ehrlich appeared on screen... I started watching this show because I needed to know a couple things about it, and I never imagined I would get super into it? Anyway, I WILL be writing up some meta about Victor.


End file.
